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IPL has set a new commercial record in Indian sports history with its five-year broadcast and digital rights for 2018-2022 being auctioned off at a whopping Rs 16,347.5 crore (Rs 54 crore per match). Uday Shankar, CEO and chairman of Star India, which won the combined IPL rights, spoke to Nalin Mehta about the impact of this deal on Indian cricket, IPL franchisees and concerns being expressed about the broadcast monopoly of his network on Indian cricket:

To what extent has the IPL rights auction changed the existing paradigm of cricket and commerce?

I am surprised by where IPL costs have gone. However, if you see it in context, Star itself is paying Rs 43 crore per match for BCCI matches. The aggregate sum of money for IPL may be very big but that’s because at least 300 matches are committed at that value over five years. If you break it down, the cost per match is not disproportionately high.

Have you been too ambitious with IPL? Are you confident of recovering such a huge bid amount?

It is aggressive, by all means. However, it is not outrageous. We have been doing our calculations and are reasonably confident that it is a sensible investment.

BCCI will now earn Rs 54 crore per IPL match, compared with Rs 25 crore per match earlier. How will this impact players and IPL franchisees?

My information is from the public domain. In the new cycle starting next year, 40% of BCCI revenues will go to franchisees. Clearly, franchisees are set for a windfall and rightly so.

You are paying more for IPL than for India matches? Is the market privileging the league over the nation?

First, Rs 54 crore per match is the price that was committed this week. Rs 43 crore per match was the price committed six years ago. That price itself will change in the next few months when the new BCCI tender happens. When the old bid happened, the digital market did not exist. The steep inflation in the IPL tender was driven hugely by digital inflation. The numbers for the national tender are set to change.

IPL is great but international tournaments are huge. You can’t undermine the national. International games like India-Australia, India-Pakistan and the World Cups are a different category altogether.

How do you respond to your detractors who accuse you of a cricket monopoly? You also have the BCCI broadcast rights till next year and ICC rights.

Detractors say this because their own vested interests have been hurt. This is coming from a bunch of people who had created a dubious business model by carrying the cricket feed that broadcasters had to share with Doordarshan (DD) as part of mandatory sharing. Some of these players were carrying it instead on their pay TV platforms under the garb of the mandatory sharing regulation.

Last month, the Supreme Court judged that this is piracy and it has been banned. The critics are people who are very frustrated that the free ride they were having, at the cost of broadcasters and DD, has been stopped.

Our BCCI rights don’t get over next year. That is only true in a technical sense. Actually, on December 24, 2017, when the India-Australia series gets over, our rights get over. IPL was also a defensive move for us. Nobody can be sure that they would be able to renew rights when they come up again. If we are not able to get BCCI rights again, then without IPL, we would have been left out in the cold.

Rights are tendered for a few years. Everybody gets a shot at them. There is no question of monopoly on something you don’t own and are just leasing for a few years.

Will you bid aggressively for the BCCI rights again then?

No, now that we have got IPL rights, we have a reasonable calendar with this and ICC. We will have to see: given the kind of values we saw in the auction for TV and digital. It’s very difficult to say that somebody can afford a lot of these cricket rights at these values.

For the first time in this country we are seeing a phenomenon where – for a media property – media, telecom and global technology and social media companies are bidding. A few other global e-commerce companies also examined it very closely. The competition is so diverse that it is anybody’s guess at what prices these things will go.

Three years ago, Hotstar bought IPL digital rights for Rs 300 crore or so. This time, for five-year digital rights, Facebook was willing to pay Rs 3,900 crore. Look at the multiples of growth. These companies have very different ways of looking at the commercial value of rights. It’s a totally different mix now. Media is being buffeted by different forces.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

Nalin Mehta is Executive Editor, TOI-Online. An award-winning social scientist, journalist and author, he has previously been consulting editor with The Times of India; managing editor, India Today (English news channel) and adjunct professor at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He has also held senior positions with the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland; as well as senior fellowships at National University of Singapore, Australian National University, Canberra, La Trobe University, Melbourne, and the International Olympics Museum, Lausanne. Mehta is a founding editor of the international journal South Asian History and Culture (Routledge) as well as the Routledge 'South Asian History and Culture' book series.
His books include 'Behind a Billion Screens: What Television Tells Us About Modern India', a critically acclaimed national bestseller long-listed for Business Book of the Year by Tata Literary Live 2015; ‘India on Television: How Satellite Channels Have Changed the Way We Think and Act', which won the 2009 Asian Publishing Award for Best Book; the best-selling 'Sellotape Legacy: Delhi and the Commonwealth Games', and a critically acclaimed social history of Indian sport, 'Olympics: The India Story' (co-authored). His edited books include 'Television in India: Satellites, Politics and Cultural Change' and 'Gujarat Beyond Gandhi: Identity, Conflict and Society' (co-edited)

Nalin Mehta is Executive Editor, TOI-Online. An award-winning social scientist, journalist and author, he has previously been consulting editor with The Tim. . .

Author

Nalin Mehta is Executive Editor, TOI-Online. An award-winning social scientist, journalist and author, he has previously been consulting editor with The Times of India; managing editor, India Today (English news channel) and adjunct professor at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He has also held senior positions with the Global Fund in Geneva, Switzerland; as well as senior fellowships at National University of Singapore, Australian National University, Canberra, La Trobe University, Melbourne, and the International Olympics Museum, Lausanne. Mehta is a founding editor of the international journal South Asian History and Culture (Routledge) as well as the Routledge 'South Asian History and Culture' book series.
His books include 'Behind a Billion Screens: What Television Tells Us About Modern India', a critically acclaimed national bestseller long-listed for Business Book of the Year by Tata Literary Live 2015; ‘India on Television: How Satellite Channels Have Changed the Way We Think and Act', which won the 2009 Asian Publishing Award for Best Book; the best-selling 'Sellotape Legacy: Delhi and the Commonwealth Games', and a critically acclaimed social history of Indian sport, 'Olympics: The India Story' (co-authored). His edited books include 'Television in India: Satellites, Politics and Cultural Change' and 'Gujarat Beyond Gandhi: Identity, Conflict and Society' (co-edited)

Nalin Mehta is Executive Editor, TOI-Online. An award-winning social scientist, journalist and author, he has previously been consulting editor with The Tim. . .